Guardians of Ga'Hoole

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For the upcoming film based on the book series, see Guardians of Ga'Hoole (film).
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The official logo for Guardians of Ga'Hoole

Guardians of Ga'Hoole is a children's fiction book series written by Kathryn Lasky and illustrated by Richard Chowder. There is also an upcoming movie of the same name, based on the series. Most of the main characters are owls, and the series is a cross between animal fiction such as Watership Down and epic fantasy. In the October/November months of 2008, the main series ended with fifteen books, the most recent book in the series being The War of the Ember. However, the series will continue with more accompanying books, including the already-released Guide Book to the Great Tree and the upcoming book Lost Tales of the Great Tree - a sneak peek was provided at the end of book fifteen. The accompanying series is written by Kathryn Huang Knight.

Ga'Hoole, in the fictional owl language, means "Great Spirit of Hoole".

Contents

[edit] Story

Soren being snatched by a St. Aggie patrol.
After escaping from St. Aggie's, Soren flys away to the Great Ga'Hoole Tree.

This series follows the adventures of Soren, a young Barn Owl. After Kludd pushes him out of his nest, a St. Aggie's patrol snatches him and takes him to the St. Aegolius' Academy for Orphaned Owls. When Soren realises that they are evil, he befriends an Elf Owl named Gylfie and together, they manage to escape. They meet Twilight, a Great Grey Owl, Digger, a Burrowing Owl, and Mrs. Plithiver, his nestmaid. With the help of two bald eagles, Streak and Zan, they kill two of St. Aggie's patrols, Jatt and Jutt. After that, the four owls form a band and fly away to the Great Ga'Hoole Tree, and meet the noble owls who live there. Soren's mentor, Ezylyrb, suddenly disappears and Soren is sent off to rescue him. Kludd and the Pure Ones attack the Great Ga'Hoole Tree. Soren pentrates into St. Aggie's. In the middle of the war, Eglantine gets brainwashed against her will by Kludd and becomes his spy. Eglantine behaves strangely and Soren and his friends vow to find out what is wrong with Eglantine. Kludd continues to battle against the Guardians of Ga'Hoole for control of their tree. Soren and his band are then sent to the mysterious Northern Kingdoms to gather allies and learn the art of war in preparation for the coming battle against the Pure Ones. Twilight kills Kludd and Kludd's only egg hatches on the eclipse and his name is Nyroc. Kludd's mate Nyra trains Nyroc, who later changes his name to Coryn. Soren later tells Coryn the truth about his father. Nyra continues to tell false stories of glory and a certain hate for Soren into Nyroc's small mind. Nyroc is a great student of the evil arts. Evil grows in his heart, fed by Nyra's tales of false glory and power. But his friend Phillip has told him of legends and strange news of a place where good owls retaliate. He summons all his courage to defy his mother and flies to the great Ga'Hoole tree. Nyroc later exiles himself from the Pure Ones. When Ezylryb is about to die, he tells Soren and the young king Coryn to read the Legends of Hoole hidden in his private library. Shortly after Soren and Coryn finished reading the legends, a golden age was dawning at the Great Tree. Meanwhile Coryn, haunted by the suspicion that haggish blood flows in his veins, hunts for the truth. His wanderings imperil himself and the Guardians who travel with him as they discover a mysterious "Sixth Kingdom" where blue owls live. The blue "dragon owl" known as the Striga, who had aided the Guardians in the Middle Kingdom, betrayed and entranced Coryn. The band is exiled (through creating malicious rumors about them) and the Striga starts gaining power. Books are burned, and fear is rampant throughout the owl kingdoms. There is a battle that takes place between the Blue Brigade (the Striga's followers) and the Guardians of Ga'Hoole. Otulissa loses an eye, and is visited by Cleve (a doctor from the Northern Kingdoms with whom she has a crush on). With his firesight, Coryn sees his evil mother, Nyra and the Striga somewhere in the Northern Kingdoms, plotting their attack against the Ga'Hoolian owls in order to take power of the Ember of Hoole. An ancient evil awakens in the deep ice caves of the northern kingdoms. Nyra teams up with the Striga to release this evil and take over the owl world. Coryn and the band form an army against Nyra and the Striga, consisting of seagulls, owls, wolves, polar bears,and puffins. But in turn Nyra has transformed into a hagsfiend and creates more hagsfiend until there is an army. Boron, the king, dies and is replaced by Coryn, who is made the new monarch of the Great Ga'Hoole Tree. Twilight discovers his two lost brothers. Soren stabs an ice dagger into Nyra's heart. Coryn returns the Ember to the volcano. The Striga fatally wounds him by slicing off his wing. Coryn soon dies from blood loss, but not before the Striga's head is sliced off by Soren. A new constellation in the shape of Coryn's face (without the scar) appears in the sky and Soren is made the new king of the Great Ga'Hoole Tree.

[edit] Books in the Series

[edit] Main Books

* From the Legends of Ga'Hoole

[edit] Accompanying Books

[edit] Legends of Ga'Hoole

The legends are not part of the bands experiences. A spin-off book series was planned to begin, entitled "Legends of Ga'Hoole". However, the series was canceled, and all books that were planned as part of the series were moved to the original "Guardians of Ga'Hoole" series, with the titles unchanged. The advance copy editions show the subtitle on the covers, although the books were not released with this feature.

The three books - nine through eleven - are about the legendary young king Hoole, and his mentor, the first collier Grank. Grank was the first to find the Ember of Hoole, and King Hoole was the first to find the Great Ga'Hoole Tree. Hoole came under the protection of Grank because his mother was a close childhood friend of Grank's.

[edit] Characters

See List of characters in Guardians of Ga'Hoole.

[edit] Locations

 This article appears to contain speculation and unjustified claims. Information must be verifiable and based on reliable published sources. Please remove speculation from the article.

Guardians of Ga'Hoole takes place in a noticeably post-human time, with Soren mentioning that the "Others" (Humans) were around at the time of the first Glaux. Thus, the Earth has likely been dramatically changed, meaning the places in Ga'Hoole are likely landmasses that have been altered over the years. However, some locations can be compared to present locations.

The Great Ga'Hoole Tree.

The Great Ga'Hoole Tree – The main place where the story takes place. It is the only known tree with Ga', the Great Spirit.

The Forest Kingdom of Tyto – This is the kingdom in which Soren hatched. The Pure Ones make their base in The Rescue in an old castle here.

St. Aegolius Canyons – A canyon-filled area where Zan, an eagle, originates from. It contains a so-called learning facility called St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls, once ruled by Skench, Ablah General. In truth, St. Aggies' was a center for brainwashing to carry out Skench's evil plan-to rule the entire owl world. By The Burning, St. Aggie's had fallen to the Pure Ones and is the location of the battle. It is located far south and west in the owl world and mainly consists of canyons. It is here that Nyroc/Coryn (the heir of King Hoole) is hatched. It may be that it was based on the Grand Canyon.

Beyond the Beyond – A place where dire wolves live. It plays a major role in Book 8, The Outcast, when Coryn retrieves the Ember of Hoole, and in Books 9 and 10, when Grank and Hoole do the same. It is known for harboring rogue smiths/colliers, and hireclaws because of the bonk coals from the volcanoes.

The Beaks - A strange uninhabited area filled with small pockets of forest and "beaks", large beak shaped formations. It is here that a Ga'Hoole slipgizzle, or spy, warned the Band of Kludd in The Journey.

The Forest Kingdom of Ambala - An area that was being devastated by St. Aggie's' egg snatching as of The Capture. An owl, Hortense, snuck herself into St. Aggie's to rescue eggs, with help from Zan. She was caught by Auntie and thrown off a cliff.

Ice Narrows - An icy straight leading to the Northern Kingdoms and the Everwinter Sea. The Band became stuck here, and lived with some puffins for a few days in The Journey.

The Desert Kingdom of Kuneer - Where Gylfie's and Digger's hollows are located and where Jutt, Jatt, and 47-2 (Three high-ranking St. Aggie's lieutenants) ate Digger's two brothers (Cunny and Flick) and killed his parents. In The Capture chapter "Desert Battle", the newly formed Band killed the lieutenants. Kuneer seems to be based on the Sonoran Desert of the American Southwest

Silverveil- This verdant forest is known for its many mosses and other vegetation. When Martin was an owlet, the Guardians rescued him from a forest fire here. This is where the Snowy owl Rogue Smith of Silverveil, whose name is unknown, lived. She was the only female smith. Silverveil seems to be based on the temperate rain forests of New Zealand.

Shadow Forest- This is one of largest forests in the Southern Kingdoms. This is where Coryn meets the web-reading rabbit after he deserts the Pure Ones; the Palace of Mist is also found here, it is where the reclusive Bess learns about the Middle Kingdom.

Jouzhen Kingdom—also known as the Middle Kingdom, and the place where the blue colored owls and the dragon owls live. The dragon owls have feathers so long from preening that they no longer are able to fly. Their lives are full of vanities. Orlando, also known as "the Striga" comes from this kingdom, shedding his excess feathers and escaping for his dislike of vanities. It is suspected that Theo was the first discoverer of the kingdom and the dragon owl's evil capabilities.

[edit] Historical Allusions

  • Ezylryb's speeches in The Siege are loosely modeled after Sir Winston Churchill's (the Prime Minister of Britain during the Second World War).
  • The Battle of Short Light and Long Night is based on the Normandy Invasion.
  • The evil Pure Ones, who believe that only Barn Owls are pure, may be an allusion to the Nazis, who had similar beliefs about purity based on lineage.
  • Kludd's name is another name for a chaplain in the Ku Klux Klan.
  • In the legends, a place named H'rathghar might be an allusion to a character in Beowulf that goes by a similar name, Hrothgar.
  • In The Golden Tree, Ezylryb's words are repeated by Fleemus, the Saw-Whet Owl, who says, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself": words famously spoken by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
  • In The Golden Tree, Madame Plonk's "Coronation Teacup" says 1953, and has the name "Queen E" on it. This was probably a reference to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
  • The Middle Kingdom, or Jouzhenkyn, is based on China, which the author had visited prior to writing The River of Wind. "The Middle Kingdom" is also an alternate name for China. Also, the welcoming term for the Middle Kingdom, hee naow, is "hello" in Chinese with the beginning letters switched.
  • In the book "Exile" the owls in a city known as "Brad" have found fragments of the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and are memorizing books just as the characters in his book did, as an owl from the Middle Kingdom is burning them.
  • The War of the Ember is based partially on the Battle of Thermopylae, in which the Persians attacked Greece with a massive army while the Greeks, mostly Spartans, remained to fight the army though their forces only consisted of three-hundred men.
  • Another reference to the Battle of Thermopylae was when Nyra told Coryn that his strategy wouldn't work and her army of hagsfiends would block out the sun and he told her, "Then we will fight you in the shade!" This is similar to the movie 300 when Xerxes, the Persian leader, told the Spartans that his men's arrows would blot out the sun. Dienekes, a Spartan warrior, responded with the same words. After saying that, Striga responded by generously requesting to lay down their weapons, in which Coryn replied "Come and get them", marking another reference to the film.
  • The favorite bed-time story of Blythe, Bell and Bash, the daughters of Soren, is a story about King Arthur.
  • Two of the only Other writers known to owl-kind are a playwright named Shakes, obviously based on Shakespeare, and a writer named Brad, based on Ray Bradbury.

[edit] Film adaptation

Main article: Guardians of Ga'Hoole (film)

Zack Snyder is directing an animated film based on the first three books of the series. The film is being produced in Australia, and it is scheduled to be released on September 24, 2010.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Guardians of Ga'Hoole series by Kathryn Lasky
Guardians
Soren • Gylfie • Twilight • Digger • Eglantine • Ezylryb • Madame Plonk • Martin • Pellimore • Ruby • Coryn
Villains
Kludd • Nyra
Characters from the Legends
Emerilla • Grank • Hoole • Lord Arrin • Siv
Other
Hagsfiends • St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls • The Great Ga'Hoole Tree
Novels
Companion Books
Film adaptation
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardians_of_Ga%27Hoole"
Languages